http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
MEMO from Al Gore to America's fighting men and
women, filed from Tallahassee: Get lost.

Memo from Bill Clinton to
America's fighting men and
women, filed from Hanoi: Drop
dead.

We've known for years what
these two bums actually think of
the military, that the men and
women in uniform are servants to
fetch and carry, pawns to use
when it's convenient (and when the
bands begin to play), but not until
now could we measure the depth
of the contempt that Al Gore and
Bill Clinton have for them.

The unfolding drama in Florida
has mostly hidden the president in Vietnam from public view,
for which we can all be thankful. There was no business in
Vietnam for this man to do. But Bill Clinton was determined
to visit Vietnam with pomp and circumstance, there to shed
his last shred of decency and shame. This is the man who
dodged the draft that sent others to die in his place, rallied the
enemies of his country on foreign soil and came home to tell
lies about it for the next 30 years. His very presence in
Vietnam, which American sacrifice had rendered holy
ground, was the final insult to his country.

The scurviest felon in state prison — murderer, rapist,
child molester — would never have had so little remorse and
mortification than to return to the occasion of such a crime.

Bill Clinton took his ease, basking in the presence of the old
men of Hanoi, their baggy pants reeking of incontinence and
their breaths of rotten fish, men who ordered America's sons
hung on the wall like sides of meat to be abused for the
amusement of the grim surgeons of human torment.

He was eager to pontificate on his observations and
asides. When an interlocutor asked, inevitably, how he "felt"
about being in this place that has haunted him since he was a
schoolboy, he attempted to wrap himself in the sacrifice of
authentic men who had offered themselves without whimper
when sacrifice summoned them to a filthy cell in the hell
called, with bitter irony, the Hanoi Hilton.

"What I feel about Vietnam," the president said, in the
argle-bargle of the Washington wonk, "is that thanks in large
measure to the bipartisan leadership of Vietnam veterans in
the Congress — Bob Kerrey, John Kerry, John McCain . . .
and Pete Peterson . . . the American people have been able
to look to the future and hope that a future can be built which
opens a new page in our relations with Vietnam . . . ."

Then the man who, as a boy confident of his connections
in Owney Madden's Hot Springs, boasted that he was "too
educated" to go to Vietnam and told the clerk at his draft
board that he would "fix your little red wagon" if she persisted
in pestering him, had more to say to the Associated Press.

"Now, when we look back on it the most important thing
is that a lot of brave people fought and died in the North
Vietnamese Army, the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese
Army and the United States Army; our allies, the Republic of
Korea and other allies who were there . . . ."

It's only right that he put the "United States Army" last in
this litany of moral equivalence. These are, after all, the men
he once boasted that he "loathed." The omission of the
Marines, the Navy and the Air Force was probably not
intentional, since Bill Clinton has never thought of the men and
women in the uniform as flesh and blood of any real
consequence to him. You've seen one uniform, you've seen
'em all, and they're all loathsome.

Al Gore, always a good student, learned well the uses of
loathing American servicemen and women. He knew the
feelings were more or less mutual, that the ballots coming in
from American bases overseas were all but certain to be
marked for George W. Bush.

And so, when the counters showed up for the task of
counting the ballots last Friday morning in county seats from
the Panhandle down to the Caribbean, Al's lawyers were
ready to dispute the right of every military ballot Florida
received.

In Duval County, where counting lasted until 5 o'clock in
the morning, the Gore lawyers who could make allowance for
every dimple for Al nevertheless challenged every signature,
date and address. In one typical example, a Navy lieutenant
serving on a ship where a postmark was not available wrote
down the date on his ballot. It was one of 64 ballots thrown
out, cast by men and women reckoned by Al to be good
enough to fight and perhaps to die, but not good enough to
vote. Al's lawyers knew that the 930-vote Bush lead might
actually be perhaps twice that, more than enough to withstand
the rigging and stealing in Palm Beach County.

The corruption of the White House, we were assured only
yesterday, stopped with the sexual corruption of interns. But
that was then, and this is now, and here we
are.